FREE STORIES 2012(99)

There were slippers too, that looked even less substantial than the ones Hoffnungshaus gave him, but which felt warmer and more protective on the feet.

Then he roamed the room, restlessly for a while, and started reading a couple of gems, but couldn’t concentrate on them. The softness of the bed called to him. The bedside clock said it was mid-afternoon on the 24th of December when he gave up resisting and went to lie down. It would pass the time, and then Carl and Jane would be back, and then he would find out what they meant. What kind of place could there be, where Jarl wouldn’t be caught? And where he would be free, like normal people?

Despite his curiosity, the comfort of the bed made him fall asleep, and he woke up with someone pounding on the door. The pounding was followed by a voice saying, “They’re not inside, sir. I told you that. They left this afternoon to go sightseeing.”

A voice sounded, sarcastic, clearly mocking the very idea of sightseeing, though Jarl couldn’t understand what it said.

“They got a map from the concierge. Here, sir, let me open the door.”

There was the sound of someone fumbling with the lock. Jarl wasn’t even fully awake, but he reacted the way he would have reacted to a similar situation at Hoffnungshaus. He rolled off the other side of the bed, then edged under it, finding that at least maid service was much better than at Hoffnungshaus, since there was hardly any dust.

He made it just in time. The door opened. The light came on. It shone reflected under the sides of the bed, and Jarl bit his lip and hoped that no one would feel the bed to see if it was warm. They would have at Hoffnungshaus.

But the voices came from near the door. “As you see, they’re not in. They said they were going sightseeing and their son would be out exploring the resort.”

There was a long silence, then a male voice with a raspy, dismayed tone said, “I don’t think that was their son. It was probably one of the escaped mules. Did you check?”

“Sir! We don’t make it a habit of checking guests.”

“Well, let me tell you who your guests are, then. These people are part of a notorious ring of mule smugglers.”

“Mule—” the man sounded as though he choked on the word and was, thereafter, incapable of speech.

“They call themselves Rescuers, or something equally ridiculous. The freedom network. They’re part of a radical sect that considers mules as humans and try to rehabilitate them. They often take the more functional ones, the foremen, and make them . . . pass. They let them infiltrate humanity.”

“Sir!” There was now true horror in the man’s voice. “I take it . . . that is, you have captured them?”

“No. We got their flyer, but they seem to have gotten hold of another. They abandoned their flyer and were seen to leave in a sky blue Gryphon, but when we tried to find it, it didn’t exist, not by that transponder number.” He made a sound that might have been the click of his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Well. We shall lock this, and get the investigators assigned to this task force to come and look through the luggage. And meanwhile, I suggest you make an announcement to have their so-called son picked up anywhere he’s seen on the resort.”

“I can . . . I can tell our personnel. An announcement . . .”

“Do as you will, but get moving with it.”

Then Jarl heard the door close and lock. He still stayed for a while, under the bed, with his cheek flat against the floor which appeared to be made of real wood, thinking. They were mule . . . rescuers. They believed mules were real humans.

Though Jarl doubted the similarity would impress those mules who’d escaped from Freiwerk, he was too well aware that those mules—those poor unfortunates created in labs and gestated in large animals, even if the animals had been bioed for the purpose—were in a way kin to him and his kind.

Oh yes, those unfortunates had been made more or less haphazardly from nationalized stores of ova and sperm. Sometimes they’d been grown from frozen embryos. At best there was nothing special about them but the markers that showed them as artifacts. At worst, the conditions under which they’d been gestated—even if the animals had been changed to supposedly secrete human pregnancy hormones and enzymes at the right time—left them mentally deficient and physically deformed. In fact, the news holos made it sound like all of them were deformed and mentally slow. And Jarl didn’t doubt that even the best of them were damaged. After all, they were raised in very large groups and taught only the absolute minimum to survive and to be able to work at manual labor.

They were all male, and many were strong, and a tight discipline was maintained over them to keep them quiescent and well behaved. Only now and then they boiled over in riot and escaped.